http://perso.univ-lyon2.fr/~dlewis/cacc.htm
Contrastive analysis of discourse marking using comparable corpora
Diana M. Lewis
Paper presented at the Contact Forum on Pragmatic Markers in Contrast, 22-23 May 2003, KVAB, Brussels, Belgium.
Abstract
Discourse markers serve a primarily interactional or discourse-structuring function and are defined here by reference to discourse-semantic, syntactic and information-structural parameters. While their syntactic behaviour will vary across languages, their discourse-semantic characteristics, this paper suggests, can be explored in comparable corpora through parameters that are valid cross-linguistically.
Much previous work on discourse markers has taken individual markers as a starting point and has examined their frequency and distribution to arrive at a characterization of their pragmatic and/or semantic values. This paper adopts this same semasiological approach with the aim of comparing usage of some common translation equivalents in English and French.
Data on some discourse markers of contrast, such as 'on the other hand', 'on the contrary', 'by contrast', 'en revanche', 'au contraire', 'par contre', are drawn from French/English comparable corpora of newspaper articles and of political speeches. Marker tokens are then characterized in terms of (i) the associated discourse construction(s), (ii) the discourse pragmatics (the relations between the ideas linked by the discourse marker), and (iii) the information structure (the relative weight or value of those ideas in the speaker/writer's argument).
Comparable corpora provide a good basis for the cross-linguistic comparison of the distribution of discourse markers and for the identification of their more central and more peripheral usages. Characterizations of markers in terms of the above parameters provides a view, albeit a coarse-grained one, both of the ranges of the markers and of the areas of overlap and divergence between quasi translation equivalents.
Contrastive analysis of discourse marking using comparable corpora
Diana M. Lewis
Paper presented at the Contact Forum on Pragmatic Markers in Contrast, 22-23 May 2003, KVAB, Brussels, Belgium.
Abstract
Discourse markers serve a primarily interactional or discourse-structuring function and are defined here by reference to discourse-semantic, syntactic and information-structural parameters. While their syntactic behaviour will vary across languages, their discourse-semantic characteristics, this paper suggests, can be explored in comparable corpora through parameters that are valid cross-linguistically.
Much previous work on discourse markers has taken individual markers as a starting point and has examined their frequency and distribution to arrive at a characterization of their pragmatic and/or semantic values. This paper adopts this same semasiological approach with the aim of comparing usage of some common translation equivalents in English and French.
Data on some discourse markers of contrast, such as 'on the other hand', 'on the contrary', 'by contrast', 'en revanche', 'au contraire', 'par contre', are drawn from French/English comparable corpora of newspaper articles and of political speeches. Marker tokens are then characterized in terms of (i) the associated discourse construction(s), (ii) the discourse pragmatics (the relations between the ideas linked by the discourse marker), and (iii) the information structure (the relative weight or value of those ideas in the speaker/writer's argument).
Comparable corpora provide a good basis for the cross-linguistic comparison of the distribution of discourse markers and for the identification of their more central and more peripheral usages. Characterizations of markers in terms of the above parameters provides a view, albeit a coarse-grained one, both of the ranges of the markers and of the areas of overlap and divergence between quasi translation equivalents.
